Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

from north-west europe to the mediterranean 279
victim of theft is not to be party to a private reconciliation with the thief,
and, if he does attempt such a private settlement, the victim is to be considered
as much a thief as the initial wrongdoer.
The Pactus pro Tenore Pacis, therefore, attempts to buttress the legal
defences against theft by ensuring that the victim should always have
someone from whom he can secure restitution. In particular, it charges the
centena of the victim with his indemnification if it should fail to secure restitution
from elsewhere, either the thief or another centena . The trustis was
given an interest in catching the thief by being offered a share in his ransom.
Finally, this method of securing both the welfare of the victim and a communal
interest in apprehending the thief was not to be hampered by political
boundaries; and here, of course, both kings had to agree to put their
authority behind the whole process. Not only could the pursuit move from
the territory of one centena to another, it could also move from one regnum
to another.
Gregory of Tours’ story about the minor war in 585 between the people
of Châteaudun and Chartres, on the one side, and those of Orleans and
Blois on the other, illustrates some of the issues that had earlier preoccupied
Childebert I and Chlothar I. 89 The immediate context was the death
of Chilperic in 584, but also relevant, in all probability, was the war between
Chilperic and Guntram two years earlier in 583. Chilperic had become the
most powerful of the Frankish kings and had taken possession of Clovis’
cathedra regni, Paris; with Paris came Châteaudun, the possession of his
brother Sigibert I until he was murdered in 575, and therefore claimed by
Sigibert’s son, Childebert II. Chilperic’s hegemony had been threatened,
first by defeat at the hands of Guntram in 583, and secondly by the forging
of a new alliance in 584 between Guntram and Childebert. Orleans and
Blois belonged to Guntram’s regnum but were particularly exposed to attack
by Chilperic’s forces and had probably suffered considerably during his
attack on Guntram in 583.
When Chilperic was, in his turn, murdered, the men of Orleans and
Blois descended upon the territory of Châteaudun, removed everything
that could move and burnt the rest. The tracks of the invading force were,
however, followed by the men of Châteaudun and Chartres; yet the pursuers
were not content to remove their stolen property but inflicted the
same thoroughgoing harrying on the men of Orleans and Blois as the latter
had meted out to them. They ‘left nothing in the houses or outside the
houses or of the houses’. On the other hand, Gregory, who was not normally
restrained in his descriptions of riot and bloodshed, does not say that
anyone lost his life as these Gallo-Roman civitates proceeded to inflict so
much hard exercise on each other’s livestock. Violence did, however,
89 Greg. Tur. Hist. vii.2.
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